a beast, an angel, a madman
by slightowl
Summary: beyond birthday and the ghosts of wammy's house.


**title: **a beast, an angel, a madman

**rating**: T

**word count**: ~780

**summary**: beyond birthday, and the ghosts of wammy's house.

**author's notes**: i couldn't get this drabble out of my head, i'm sorry.

* * *

**a beast, an angel, a madman**

_"I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me." ― Dylan Thomas_

The ghosts at Wammy's are temperamental. Like the estate's electrical wiring, they flare and burn, leaving charred imprints of their bodies against the wallpaper. Their moods predict drafts that rattle through the orphanage, disturbing the termites and sending chandeliers into orbit.

The dead woman in the dining room yanks a knot from Beyond's hair, but the other boys do not notice. Beyond is not surprised. He is cursed, but in a melancholy — almost pleasant — way. Hawkmoths dive into his open palms. Toadstools sprout from his footprints in the garden. Ravens caw prophetic quatrains at his windowsill.

This ghost wears a sheer hospital gown, and her nipples show wide and violet through the fabric. Blood streams continuously from her left nostril. The ghost watches A and L eat, and tells Beyond how each of them will die.

"The blonde boy, he'll hang himself from rafters in the attic. The plan is already forming in his mind. He feels like he is sinking. Each time he looks up, he sees fading stripes of sunlight against the ocean's surface."

The four above A's head becomes a three, as L comments on the Heisenberg principle and licks peanut butter off his spoon. Lightning bugs blink in sequence through the window. Beyond slurps his soup, but they both ignore him.

"And he," the ghost says, pointing at L's explosion of hair, "He is the lucky one. He'll die in the arms of the one who loves him most."

• • • •

Months pass. Snow falls. When spring arrives, Roger tends to the larkspur atop A's grave.

Beyond finds another ghost in the library. This one has no fixed form. Beyond has found it tucked beneath the inside cover of a novel, disguised as a fleck of light. He has seen it stretched like water above the history section. Once it had been enormous, like a newborn star, devouring bookshelves. The ghost steals Beyond's pens. It flings books across the room. It annotates novels in schizophrenic handwriting.

"A?" Beyond whispers into the wedge of space between pages. The cover snaps closed, sending a whorl of dust into Beyond's face, but nothing answers.

• • • •

Beyond sometimes wakes gasping, "I want to go home."

The ghost that lives in his sock drawer curls against the cold curve of Beyond's neck. It smells of sawdust, and spends its days braiding the fringes of Beyond's aged clothes.

"You _are_ home," it whispers, which is a lie they have both agreed upon.

In truth, Beyond is fond of the ghosts. He feels a kinship with their loneliness ― with the notion that they are the last surviving members of a species surrendering to extinction, which is worse than death.

• • • •

Beyond is quite sure the thing in the chapel is not a ghost at all.

He sneaks into the building to smoke, peeling away vines that circle its tarnished doorknob. The rainbow from the rose window travels the chapel, marking the hours. The pews are florescent green. Sometimes, Beyond preaches from the empty pulpit, reciting Latin through heaving laughter.

The thing in the chapel pays no attention. It huddles in the confessional, writing in a leather book. It has the twitching ears of a rabbit, listening for a fox in swaying reeds.

Beyond tries to speak with it once.

"What's your name?" he whispers, because Beyond cannot see. He searches the air above the thing's head, but finds only a dark gap that makes Beyond feel desperate, like he is meant to reach in and pluck something out.

The thing gives a huff and keeps writing, letter after letter, never pausing to straighten its fingers.

"That power is not for you, half-breed. Go away."

Beyond senses an old truth behind its words, and obeys.

That evening Beyond finds L monitoring a kettle on the stovetop. L's sleeves are pushed up to the elbow. There are pink rings embedded in his forearms. Since A's death, L has been snappish. There is a scab over the hangnail on his left thumb.

"Go away, Beyond," L says. His tea smells like macaroons.

"That is all anyone tells me anymore."

L disappears with a teacup, and Beyond watches a spirit weave through his steam trail. Its laughter sends an odd tremor through the chambers of Beyond's spine. The dead are restless at Wammy's tonight.

"Beyond, Beyond, you don't belong," it sings, and Beyond wafts the ghost away, though he is inclined to agree.

**Fin**.


End file.
